{"id":6819,"date":"2013-11-20T09:11:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T15:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=6819"},"modified":"2013-11-20T09:11:28","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T15:11:28","slug":"miley-cyrus-sexuality-and-my-alma-mater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2013\/11\/20\/miley-cyrus-sexuality-and-my-alma-mater\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley Cyrus, Sexuality and My Alma Mater"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month’s column features a guest-post by Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Ph.D<\/a>.: she critiques a recent pop culture debate and\u00a0encourages us to\u00a0question the impact of imagery and songs on\u00a0healthy\u00a0sexuality.\u00a0\u00a0Trier-Bieniek is an assistant professor of sociology at Valencia College.\u00a0 She\u00a0studies pop culture, gender and healing after trauma; she also\u00a0wrote the\u00a0book\u00a0Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos<\/a> (Scarecrow Press 2013).<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

A few months ago I was sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting to fly home to Orlando when I got a Facebook alert on my phone.\u00a0 One of my college friends had tagged me in a post, a news story, with the headline \u201cMichigan University Removes Pendulum Statue.\u201d<\/a> What followed was an E! News article featuring a large wrecking ball that hangs in the campus of my alma mater, Grand Valley State University.\u00a0 The ball was being ridden by a naked person, seemingly an imitation of Miley Cyrus in her video for her song Wrecking Ball<\/a> where she sings about heartbreak while naked and swinging on a wrecking ball.\u00a0 As I read through the short blurb what struck me (beyond the naked student) was E!\u2019s statement that \u201cMiley Cyrus, the tongue flickering demon\u2026 Has set her sights on your college students!\u201d\u00a0 This was probably meant to be tongue in cheek (pun intended), but the message was clearly connected to the dangers of feminine sexuality.<\/p>\n

\"mileywrecking\"<\/a>A few days later, Sinead O\u2019Conner wrote an open letter<\/a> to Miley about the music industry\u2019s penchant for over-sexualizing female pop stars and kicking them to the curb once executives have made their money.\u00a0 This lead to an exchange between Cyrus and O\u2019Conner in which Miley Cyrus attacked Sinead O\u2019Conner\u2019s history of being treated for bipolar disorder and her attempts at suicide.\u00a0 Then Robin Thicke appeared on Oprah\u2019s Next Chapter to discuss his performance with Cyrus at the\u00a0performance with Cyrus at the Video Music Awards<\/a> (VMA\u2019s). In case you are not familiar, the routine included Miley Cyrus wearing a gold two-piece outfit, seemingly to make her appear close to nude, while \u201ctwerking\u201d in front of Thicke\u2019s groin while also getting sexual with a foam finger.\u00a0 Thicke said that, when he is performing, he doesn\u2019t pay attention to who is touching his body because he is focused on his music and vocals.<\/p>\n

I study gender and music<\/a> and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this series of events and their connection to sexuality and body privilege.\u00a0 No doubt the video for Wrecking Ball was created to get Cyrus some attention, it couldn\u2019t be more obvious that she was literally shedding the image of Hanna Montana as she swung on the ball.\u00a0 Yet there was a vulnerability to the performance that got lost in the reaction to her appearing naked.\u00a0 Most people seemed to be so caught up in gazing at her body that the expression of loss and heart-break she sang about was missed.\u00a0 Perhaps this is just the media doing what it does best, finding the most alluring part of a story and exposing it.\u00a0 Or, maybe the reactions to the song are found in the age-old assumption that nudity, particularly nude women, are objectionable.\u00a0 Except, in 2013 women\u2019s nude bodies not only battle the puritan stance on nudity, they also are attacked with judgments on weight, symmetry, skin color and expectations of perfection.<\/p>\n

Sinead O\u2019Conner is right, the music industry sets up young and attractive people in order to cash out on their youth and beauty.\u00a0 It creates a standard for what young women must do in order to get noticed and to keep the audience\u2019s attention.\u00a0 Thicke\u2019s comments about not noticing how sexual Cyrus\u2019s dancing was at the VMA\u2019s demonstrates a privilege that is specific to masculinity and male bodies.\u00a0 How can he not realize that there is a half-naked girl grinding on him?\u00a0 I find this hard to believe. What Thicke did in this moment was affirm that Cyrus\u2019s body was the object and the subject of the performance and that his body didn\u2019t need to be a part of the discussion.\u00a0 This is a privilege granted to the person in power, most women who are performing cannot escape the objectification of the male gaze.<\/p>\n

While I am not sure if Cyrus should be flattered by people riding naked on a wrecking ball at my alma mater, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that a handful of them were hoping to connect with the vulnerable side Cyrus showed in the video.\u00a0 Later this month, when I return to campus to speak,<\/a> I hope to find out if this is true. Much like the famous feminist mantra that floats around \u201cIf I had a hammer I would smash patriarchy\u201d, in this case what we need, ironically, may be a wrecking ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month’s column features a guest-post by Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Ph.D.: she critiques a recent pop culture debate and\u00a0encourages us to\u00a0question the impact of imagery and songs on\u00a0healthy\u00a0sexuality.\u00a0\u00a0Trier-Bieniek is an assistant professor of sociology at Valencia College.\u00a0 She\u00a0studies pop culture, gender and healing after trauma; she also\u00a0wrote the\u00a0book\u00a0Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1918,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21094],"tags":[25826,22985,22987,25825,25824,25827,25823],"class_list":["post-6819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bedside-manners","tag-grand-valley-state-university","tag-miley-cyrus","tag-robin-thicke","tag-sinead-oconner","tag-twerking","tag-video-music-awards","tag-wrecking-ball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1918"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6824,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}